Concessions to Cancer

Dec 17th 2015

This world has changed dramatically in the last 30 years. I’ve
watched it happen. Many of us cringe at what is the “new normal.” Many of us remember when cancer was a strange
thing for a family member to get and when we could lock our kids outside to
play and that was an acceptable way to parent. Many of us remember building
things out of reclaimed wood before real hammers and nails were deemed too
dangerous and kids too irresponsible. I remember when red food dye was found to
cause cancer and, for a decade, M&M’s had no red ones in the bag! They
weren’t even using the same kind of red dye that was in question, but because
consumers were actually scared of cancer, they just stopped with red M&M’s
so they wouldn’t lose sales.

Please think about that. In 1976 people were concerned about getting cancer and they
did what they needed to do for themselves and their families to AVOID GETTING
CANCER. What do you hear most often now? “Everything
causes cancer!” with a dismissive wave of the hand. Please stop and think.
Stop. And think. A very large company took an ingredient out of their famous
candies because they knew that some people would stop buying their candy and
even, possibly, because they were concerned about public health. This is
absolutely unheard today and we need to do some serious introspection about how
we got to place where, literally, it is truth that, “Everything causes cancer,”
and we just sit back and let it.

Through the desensitization of the public, companies have no
reason at all avoid cancer-causing ingredients. We are completely naïve and
bordering on suicidal if we believe that corporations or the FDA are protecting us. If they were protecting us then parabens,
BHA, all types of SLS (sodium laurel sulfate- a surfactant or soap), food
coloring, and chlorine (one of the most well-known poisons) in our drinking water
would have been banned by now if even ever been allowed into our consumption ring.

I am not dramatizing
the dangers of these chemicals, either. All of them are well-documented as
cancer-causing. No science has denied that. What has been denied, and the job
of the FDA comes in here, is how much and often the general public consumes
these chemicals due to their prevalence across the board in such a myriad of
products. If anyone recognizes this, it’s the FDA. But is does not take rocket
science for any of you to walk down an aisle at the grocery store and read
labels (you do also need to know the “other” “new” names of these chemicals
because they are very often called different things on different labels). You
can very easily see that a person could end up with an entire cart of 1-5 known
cancer causing chemicals in every product. The main argument for
many of these chemicals is that they are at “safe” levels in our food and
water. But “safe” levels do not account for them being in every food and in every
single soap on the shelves.

Really, the absolute
most important question here is- why are ANY cancer causing chemicals ALLOWED
on the market?? Why??? I grew up in the 70’s and it was not some disgusting
dirty germ-filled world where food was full of bacteria and spoiled quickly.
Because that’s what these chemicals do. But we truly cannot say that the
chemicals we have allowed have improved any quality of life whatsoever. Again,
stop and realize that adding cancer causing chemicals into our ring has not changed
life at all. Our food supply is truly no more safe, our soaps don’t work better
than they used to, and there are not less germs and bacteria in our world.

Unfortunately, at this point, I don’t think that picketing
outside of anywhere is going to change the world or even one company. So I ask
that you change your consumption. I ask that you find what we found in the 70’s
unacceptable to be unacceptable again. That cancer should not be common and
does not have to be. That poisoning our children through blasé attitudes about
what they are exposed to just stop. Stop and care.

I began this article because I wanted desperately to write
about the extremely frightening rise in skin cancer just since 1992 in our
country. I wanted to write about all the
possible chemical contributors in your soaps and lotions to this 77% increase in
the incidence of skin cancer. But then my research and my anger got the best of
me and this just became about all of our societal concessions that we’ve made
since I was a kid.